A New Science Kit Lets Teens Watch Neurons as They Fire

Share

MOTOR VEHICLES: The possibilities were (and are) endless. All you need is a sturdy chassis and a good set of blueprints. Scientific American, January 6, 1912

TRUCKS VS. HORSES: A hard-sell advertisement from Gramm Trucks asks the business owner a pointed question about the utility of a smart modern truck versus a team of tired old nags. Scientific American, September 28, 1912

STONE FOR ROADS: A truck hauls a load of road-building stone to John D. Rockefeller's mansion in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. The estate is now a historic site of the National Trust. Scientific American, January 6, 1912

MOTORIZED BAGGAGE: "Three-ton truck loaded with trunks for a large summer hotel." In 2012, thanks to air-conditioning, the middle class no longer flees the city because of the heat of summer. Scientific American, January 6, 1912

Advertisement

FARM MOTORS: Inventors and companies put a lot of effort into trying to provide agriculture the right kind of vehicle with enough horse-replacing power. Scientific American, February 10, 1912

A "DUMPING TRUCK": The tailboard opens automatically as the bed is tilted. The concept remains unchanged. Scientific American, January 6, 1912

DIESEL ENGINE: Dr. Rudolph Diesel developed an engine that delivered more miles per gallon than a gasoline engine. Until recently, diesel-fuelled cars were considered to be more polluting than gasoline engines. Scientific American, April 20, 1912

AUTO INDUSTRY: If the material for the 209,000 cars manufactured in 1911 were used for one car, it “would tower to a height of 442 feet, or within 100 feet of the top of the Municipal Building.” Scientific American, July 20, 1912

Advertisement

WHAT ARE WE SELLING This advertisement for Studebaker (it ceased producing autos in 1966) shows young folk fleeing the cares of the world—and perhaps the strict oversight of their parents? Scientific American, August 10, 1912

ELECTRIC CAR: Stylish and easy-to-operate competition for the internal-combustion engine. The lack of range and a top speed of only 20 M.P.H. doomed the Waverley company and it ceased production in 1916. Scientific American, September 7, 1912

When I was a graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Michigan, we would record the brains of animals and try to figure out what the brains were doing. At the same time, we were going into classrooms and teaching neuroscience to kids. Tim Marzullo—now my business partner—and I noticed that there was a big difference between what we were doing in the lab and what was being taught. They were using Ping-Pong balls and jump ropes to explain action potentials [electrical activity that occurs when neurons fire], but that’s so far removed from what is really going on in the brain.

We came up with an idea to build a recording kit for $100. The SpikerBox is a bioamplifier. What’s happening is that axons have electricity, and the electricity gets picked up by the pins on the machine. You’re listening to what the brain is doing. In our example, we use cockroaches, but we’d like to get things going on vertebrates and sea animals in the future.

Although our assembled kit costs $100, if you build it yourself, the parts are $49. A lot of high schools have an engineering or a physics class where the students build the kit and then use it in that course or hand it off to another class, say, biology or physiology.

We wanted to do this because kids who could become the best neuroscientists in the world might never become neuroscientists because neuroscience is not taught in high school. They might teach about the nervous system or the brain, but it’s very general. When you choose a career, you don’t choose things you read about in books; you choose based on the experiences you have. Seeing that cockroach leg dance to music and being able to manipulate the leg and hear the spikes that come out of it are really compelling. Those are events in children’s lives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Rose Eveleth

Rose Eveleth is a writer and producer based in New York City. She's dabbled in everything from research on pelagic invertebrates to animations about beer to podcasts about fake tumbleweed farms. She's also obsessed with the sounds things make - so if you have anything cool for her to listen to, she wants to hear it! You can follow her at @roseveleth or check out her website roseveleth.com.

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www.springernature.com/us). Scientific American maintains a strict policy of editorial independence in reporting developments in science to our readers.